Draw Something > Earn $200m

One of my mates, Dimitri, uploaded some stills of the games he was playing, and they appeared in my news feed.

It caught my attention.

Then, almost like wildfire, more and more people started saying they were playing the game on Facebook.

Now, he game, designed for mobile smartphones and tablet pcs, has been downloaded 35 million times.

Draw Something is a simple concept, modelled on Pictionary.

You’re given a word.

You draw it.

And one of your connections that you’re playing with has to guess it.

Simple.

It’s connectivity with Facebook also adds a social element.

What’s interesting is that the new iPad has been developed to handle super speed and complex gaming. Yet it seems, these simple, user friendly games are the ones dominating popularity and making most of the money.

It’s something the guys at Zynga noticed.

Zynga makes the popular games Farmville and Mafia Wars on Facebook.

Overnight, it paid a reported $200million to take over the company that makes Draw Something, OMGPOP.

Not a bad profit for a firm with 40 employees in New York that was only set up 6 years ago.

With more funding behind it, the developers will be able to expand the game further by creating international versions in different languages.

But what happens when a busniess exhausts its growth opportunties online?

The answer for one, was to go back into the real world.

Rovio, the creater of Angry Birds, has just signed a deal with Walmart to sell Angry Bird characters and toys.

It’s also entered discussions to open a number of Chinese Angry Birds branded stores.

The Chinese love Angry Birds. So much so, an Angry Birds attraction was built at one theme park.

But Rovio is going one step further and is now building an complete Angry Birds theme park in the United Kingdom.

It won’t be anywhere near the size of DisneyWorld, but what it will do, is remind everyone of the Angry Birds brand, hopefully, in turn, getting users to buy more versions of the popylar game.